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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Life is Beautiful Movie Review by Chaitanya Kumar Vummethala

A movie can be sensible and beautiful only with a brilliant and intellectual team of technicians and most importantly, the visionary Director and Script Writer. Coming to the "Life is Beautiful" its a movie made with a specific intention and the captain proved his skill of turning simple things more beautiful once again with this flick. Though most of the reviewers are speaking rave about this movie, I personally liked the movie exceptionally good for many reasons (mentioned below) and rate Mr. Kammula's latest project with high marks.

Let us see why is this conclusion come from me....... It may be Dollar Dreams, Anand, Godavari, Happy Days or Leader and now Life is Beautiful - Sekhar Kammalu is always climbing high by selecting and making different kind of movies. He inspired and influenced me with his every flick and made me a great fan of his. It is very easy to comment on a technician's work but is highly difficult to shot a scene and coordinate with all the 24 frames, to make it beautiful.Story, Dialogues, Screenplay and Direction - Sekhar Kammula, the branded director who is known for his innovative thoughts and freshness in the selection of subjects, while highlighting human values and sensibilities has come up with a much exciting title this time as "Life is Beautiful". Though he spent a lot of time in preparing the script for this movie, I found a little gap (when compared to his past movies) in terms of gripping narration or convincing scenes (very few, of-course) however, Sekhar never disappointed me with his final product or choice of genre!

Director's vision starts right from the preparation of the script and Mr. Kammula selected the right talent (whether it may be a technical crew or cast) for his project and molded the product extremely well. To start with, the very first scene is a conversation between a mother (surprising actress) and her three kids (all new comers) have performed their best debuts and continued the same until the last frame - this shows the correct judgment of the Director about the actors. Next thing to discuss is about the rest of the casting and his technical team, in one word - he is brilliant in terms of choosing.

As the movie is all about describing the beauty of lives, it needs a great team of actors, cinematographer, art and music directors (among many other technicians) to add a great value to it and the captain extracted the complete talent of these people to shape the movie really beautiful. For an instance he used the multi-facted art director, Thota Tharani and spent a whooping 1 Crore Rupees for a colony set (apart from other requisites) just to get the required feel.

It is evident that Sekhar who is quickly shifting his genre selections from movie to movie, seems to choose a mass masala commercial subject for his next project. Probably this has influenced a little on Life is Beautiful which made the movie not so natural but little unrealistic - having said that movie is really beautiful with the presence of talented actors performing and technicians contributing their best, in it.

Music - Mickey J Meyer, the melody mesmerizer has once again provided soothing music for both the songs and back ground score in Life is Beautiful which is a great value addition to the movie. His association with Mr. Kammula started with Happy Days and continued to Leader and now to this flick. I can say that, this combination is perfect and appreciated by the music lovers way back in 2007 itself. His team of singers and lyricists can be seen in the below table of contents (Tracks List).

Editing - Marthan K Venkatesh, must have suggested few cuts in the movie that would have helped the movie to reach much greater heights.Cinematography - Vijay C Kumar is a selectively chosen technician and is so special for Sekhar Kammula's movies, the captain of the ship has not changed his cinematographer right from his first movie Dollar Dreams till date. Vijay thrilled the audience through out the movie and have really gave life to many budding artists, one such live examples are Tamanna, Kamlini etc.,

Art Director - "Padma Shri" Thota Tharani, 62 year old multiple-national award winner and the most talented technician has done an amazing job not only by erecting a set worth 1 Crore (Gated Community Colony to match the story line) explicitly beautiful (which will certainly attract many upper-middle class people to prefer such communities for leading their beautiful lives) but also contributed his best on few other key scenes to fill life in Life is Beautiful. His work has elevated the script to the next level.

Producers - Sekhar Kammula & Chandrasekhar Kammula, has a lot of passion towards telugu cinema and can be clearly seen in all their previous movies along with their latest flick. Their contribution towards Indian cinema is remarkable.

Abhijeet (Srinu, Srinivas) and Shagun (Paddu, Padmavathi) were lucky to get the lead roles and as mentioned above they were apt choice for the respective roles and never gave a chance to any critic to comment on their debut performances. Abhijeet has a maturity in acting and Shagun carried the required feel and emotion for her role as Paddu. Couple has a great scope to grow in the industry with the charm and chance they had.

Kaushik (Abhi, Abhiram) is the most luckiest debut actor to have Shreya Saran (Paru, Parwathi) as his costar and this future doctor has bright chance to shine in the industry, due to his proved performance in the movie. Looks innocent with his cute face, but his timing to crack a joke / confident punches is absolutely great and highly appreciable. Shreya Saran is as usually beautiful and stunned with her performance as a young girl (though she looked little old than Kaushik).

Sudhakar (Nagaraj) and Zara (Lakshmi) both have proved as matured actors with their respective roles and took the movie to the next level, brilliant expressions and performances by both. We need to specially discuss about the telangana slang (in the movie) of an andhra boy (in real life) is really enjoyable. Overall Analysis: After Happy Days, Mr. Kammula selected a much powerful and honest subject like Leader and most of the audience did not understand the depth of the director's vision for that subject, but I could. Similarly though Life is Beautiful deals with youth (college going students) and their lifestyle, it is definitely a different subject with a fresh story line but of same genre as Happy Days. Sekhar scored high marks in his very first role as a script writer and moved much brighter when it comes to selection of cast and crew (as mentioned above) and finally proved his excellence once again as a director. The movie starts with an important episode and quickly moves to the main plot (Colony), the background score, fresh faces, beautiful colony among many other technical aspects thrills the audience with a great sense of connection to their personal lives (not everyone ofcourse). Slowly the director injects the beauty of the characters' lives by narrating a variety of episodes with regular intervals consisting of beautiful songs. These are not just meant for relaxation but to completely involve in the movie. As the movie reaches the end, the director intelligently comes to the point and makes all the lives more beautiful.Life is very very beautiful and my rating for Life is Beautiful is 3.75 / 5.